An organisation whose IT team I know well has moved a lot of their services across to various Google platforms. The move has been considered largely positive by users and management alike, not least because it has significantly reduced the management and infrastructure burdens on their organisation, and has genuinely improved IT-related life in many key ways.

The move therefore continues apace. One problem identified by the organisation is that there seems little sense in paying c.£500-£1000 per head for a computer setup that spends the vast majority of its time being used (legitimately) as a web-browser. The various Chromebooks undergoing trial have been a huge success given their planned usage, but with one common problem: Users in 2013/14 STILL need to be able to print.

[Enter Google Cloud Print (BETA), Stage Left]

“No problem!” says Google, “Here’s Cloud Print!”. There are two flavours of documentation presented, in “consumer” and “IT Administrator” guises, both essentially saying (and ultimately describing) the same thing.

For those who haven’t come across it yet – the idea is that you buy a “Google Cloud Print Enabled” printer, give it 24/7 power and Internet, and you can print to it from anywhere, using your Google account in various creative ways. Specifically for my friend, it gives print access to Chromebooks and other portable devices for which no other good printing solutions already exist. Essentially if it can run Google Chrome, it can print. And the concept is really neat.

Forecast: Storms ahead

There’s a thunderstorm in some clouds however, and this service is no exception. I’ve heard a few common complaints in various pub-conversations, and even investigated a few when I’ve experienced them myself within my own Google Apps domains:

First off, some printers, once correctly hooked-up and signed-in, simply stop receiving Cloud Print jobs. Often, turning them off and back on, and waiting up to a day, solves it. But sometimes the log-jam becomes permanent. Printing via local network or direct USB connection works fine from machines that can do it, but all Cloud Print jobs get stuck, forever destined to be “In Progress”.

The Cloud Print Management interface looks surprisingly mature for a Beta product, except that it gives very little information about what is really happening. Once a job inevitably gets stuck, there’s no option to do anything other than to wait, or delete it. It can’t be diverted to another printer.

More worrying, the status-codes are too general. Sure, I don’t need a verbose running commentary when things are working well, nor perhaps when a job is “in progress”. But when things get stuck, I’d like more information about the problem than the job simply being flagged “Error”.

Google provides no technical support for Cloud Print – so beyond what you can find in documentation provided either by Google or your printer manufacturer, you’re on your own. No support. No apparent feedback mechanism even.

If something does go wrong, often the only way to fix it is to delete the printer on Cloud Print, and re-assign it. This might be fine for single home users, but for anyone looking to share a printer between two or more people, this gets complicated, because you then need to share the newly-set up printer again with those who need it.

Then there’s the pervading security concern. Where are those jobs going when travelling between the browser and the printer, and in what format? Are they encrypted? Are the documents scanned for content by Google or anyone else on the way?

Google comes close to a partial-answer in the FAQ/support page, with the following statements:

Documents you send to print are your personal information and are kept strictly confidential. Google does not access the documents you print for any purpose other than to improve printing.

For home users, that might be good enough. At least there’s *something* in writing. But for a business I’d suggest it’s too vague. Let’s leave that alone for a moment and look at troubleshooting; how do I get a print queue working again, if I’m using a cloud ready printer? Again, Google has a partial answer:

Some reading this might say I’m being too harsh about what is *really* only a beta product. And they might be right, if the product was released within the context of a beta product essentially being marketed or released only to technically-interested (and competent) people for evaluation, feedback and improvement before a wider release. What’s happened instead is that some printer manufacturers have jumped onto the product by offering support (good), but without making it clear that this is a BETA service which may change, break or be taken offline at any time, without warning (bad. Very bad).

Even the business run-down provided by Google doesn’t mention its BETA status, and gives no clue as to how support or (useful) feedback can be found, nor even submitted.

So, is this going to be like so many other recent Google BETA products to get half a momentum going and then suddenly be killed? Or will it actually become more like Gmail and mature into a properly supported service, with SLA’s available to those who need them? Only time will tell, but meanwhile based on what I know now, I’m finding it very hard to recommend deploying Google Cloud Print in my own organisations in its present form…